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MODERN SURVIVALS OF THE ORDEAL. BY GEORGE H. WESTLEY.

WHAT an interesting chapter one might write upon the old and once widely extended institution of trial by ordeal; how one might describe the ordeal by blood, by fire, by hot iron, by boiling oil, by poison; the ordeal by weighing, diving, chewing, swallowing, touching; the test of the arrow, the bread, the taper, the Bible, the image, the snake, and a hundred other such things —yes, what an interesting chapter one might write hereupon if only previous writers had not been so selfish and inconsiderate as to treat the whole matter so often and so ex haustively that it is now too familiar to be further dealt with. There happens to be a little corner of the subject, however, which has suffered less than the rest from the attacks of the quill brigade, and upon this I turn my attention. I propose to bring together a few notes show ing that this custom of judicial ordeal, medi oeval in spirit though it is, has been practised well within the bound of our own generation, and in a few instances very close to our own doors. Judge Bennett, who was recently retired from active service by the Newfoundland government, relates the following little ex perience. A few years ago he was visiting one of the small villages of the island, when a woman came to him with the complaint that a pair of blankets which she had hung out to dry had been stolen. She asked the judge to turn the key on the Bible to dis cover the thief. He of course refused, as suring her he had no such power; but as the woman continued to urge him, he pro posed another plan. He told her to get a large iron pot and a crowing bird, and to summon all the men in the neighborhood to gather that evening at her house. When the company had assembled, the

rooster was put under the pot, the lamp was extinguished in the house and the men were led outside. One man, whom the judge sus pected as the guilty party, protested strongly against the proceeding, declaring his disbe lief in any such idea as it involved. How ever, they were required in turn to go in and touch the pot, the understanding being that when the guilty one should do so, the cock would immediately crow. Each man went in and returned without the expected sign, and the man who had pro tested against the proceeding now appealed to the fact to show the folly of it. The judge, however, called them into the house, and the lamp being relit, he remarked on the strangeness of the affair and then sud denly asked them all to hold up their hands, when it was found that this man's hands were clean, showing that he had never touched the pot at all. He at first attempted to deny his guilt, but on being threatened with being sent to jail, he gave up his plunder. While we indulge in a smile at the super stitious credulity or gullibility of these New foundlanders, let us not forget that the ju dicial ordeal is not unknown in our annals. Even the Civil War is less recent than the belief in some parts of our country that a murdered body will bleed or give some sign at the approach of the murderer. In 1868 at Verdierville in Virginia, a suspected assas sin was compelled to touch the body of a woman found murdered in a wood; and in 1869 at Lebanon, Illinois, the corpses of two murdered persons were exhumed and two hundred of the neighbors were marched past and made to touch them, in hope of identi fying the criminals by the bleeding of the bodies. In 1833 when a man named Getter was on trial in Pennsylvania for the murder of